History is Happening Now

(Before reading this post, check out this video on YouTube — bits of which were recently played on NPR’s Marketplace program and ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopolous. This video is popular because it perfectly represents the left’s attitude toward Paul Krugman — our new saviour, apparently.)

I was happy to see Nobel prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman featured on the front page of Newsweek — happy because I thought the article might contain some important facts and analysis for those of us who aren’t ready to accept him as the second coming of Christ.

Unfortunately, the article provides only the bare minimum of reporting required to avoid exemplifying the Krugman-worship it reports about. And sometimes the article doesn’t even provide that. The article appears reluctant to provide any substantive information that might weaken Krugman’s claim to perfection.

For example, consider this excerpt from the Newsweek article:

The Obama White House is careful not to provoke the wrath of Krugman any more than necessary. Treasury officials go out of their way to praise him by name (while also decrying the bank-rescue prescriptions of him and his ilk as “deeply impractical”). But the administration does not seek to cultivate him. Obama aides have invited commentators of all persuasions to the White House for some off-the-record stroking; in February, after Krugman’s fellow Times op-ed columnist David Brooks wrote a critical column accusing Obama of overreaching, Brooks, a moderate Republican, was cajoled by three different aides and by the president himself, who just happened to drop by. But, says Krugman, “the White House has done very little by way of serious outreach. I’ve never met Obama. He pronounced my name wrong”—when, at a press conference, the president, with a slight note of irritation in his voice, invited Krugman (pronounced with an “oo,” not an “uh” sound) to offer a better plan for fixing the banking system.

It’s possible that Krugman is a little wounded by this high-level disregard, and he said he felt sorry about criticizing officials whom he regards as friends, like White House Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer. But he didn’t seem all that sorry.

Given Krugman’s claim that the White House “has done very little by way of serious outreach,” and author Evan Thomas’ claim that the White House “does not seek to cultivate him,” isn’t it relevant that Obama offered to meet with Krugman and hear him out — and Krugman declined?

This is reported in Michael Calderone’s blog on Politico, in a report on Obama’s meeting with liberal columnists and pundits on January 14: “Paul Krugman, who Obama’s willing to hear out on economic issues, was invited, but didn’t attend.”

Why didn’t Krugman attend? Why would Newsweek report on the relationship between Obama and Krugman — and point out that Krugman has never met Obama — without mentioning that Krugman turned down an opportunity to meet him and talk with him?

Then, there’s this later in the Newsweek article:

Krugman has a bit of a reputation for settling scores. “He doesn’t suffer fools. He doesn’t like hauteur in any shape or form. He doesn’t like to be f––ked with,” says his friend and colleague Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz. “He’s not a Jim Baker; he’s not that kind of Princeton,” says Wilentz, referring to the ur-establishment operator who was Reagan’s secretary of the Treasury and George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state. But Wilentz went on to say that Krugman is “not a prima donna, he wears his fame lightly,” and that Krugman is not resented among his academic colleagues, who can be a jealous lot. Krugman’s fellow geniuses sometimes tease him or intentionally provoke his wrath. At an economic conference in Tokyo in 1994, Krugman spent so much time berating others that his friends purposely started telling him things that they knew weren’t true, just to see him get riled up. “He fell for it every time,” said a journalist who was there but asked not to be identified so she could speak candidly. “You’d think that eventually, he would say, ‘Oh, come on, you’re just jerking my chain’.” Krugman says he doesn’t recall the incident, but says it’s “possible.”

Why does Krugman have “a reputation for settling scores?” I personally believe (without sufficient evidence, I admit) that Krugman’s “opposition” to Obama — “he has been critical, if not hostile, to the Obama White House” is how the Newsweek article puts it — has more to do with Krugman trying to “settle a score” than it has to do with economics or politics. If Krugman has a “reputation for settling scores,” I think it might be interesting to know the details. But the article provides no evidence to justify its claim that Krugman is vindictive. And the details would make all the difference for those of us who are trying to make the case that Krugman isn’t what his worshippers think he is.

And then, consider this:

Arriving at the Times just before Bush’s election in 2000, he was soon writing about politics and national security as well as economics, sharply attacking the Bush administration for invading Iraq. Someone at the Times—Krugman won’t say who—told him to tone it down a bit and stick to what he knew. “I made them nervous,” he says. In 2005, Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent wrote, “Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” Krugman says that Okrent “caved” to the criticism of conservative ideologues who were out to get him. (“I tried to be an honest broker,” says Okrent. “But when someone challenged Krugman on the facts, he tended to question the motivation and ignore the substance.”) It’s true that during the Bush era Krugman was the target of cranks and kooks, but it is also true that in areas outside his expertise he sometimes gets his facts wrong (his record has improved lately). Krugman is unrepentant about his Bush bashing. “I was more right in 2001 than anyone in the pundit class,” he says.

Suprise, surprise: Krugman “gets his facts wrong.” But which facts? The Newsweek article leaves out any evidence of factual inaccuracy. After reading the article, I perused his Wikipedia page in hopes of finding documentation of his factual inaccuracies, but there was nothing there. The article also says Krugman’s record “has improved lately.” What does that mean? Was he wrong 50% of the time five years ago, and now he’s only wrong 25% of the time? How did Evan Thomas determine that Krugman’s record “has improved lately?”

And what are the “substantive assaults” to which Krugman left himself open? Okrent seems to be making the argument that Krugman’s arguments didn’t hold up under scrutiny — but the article provides no insight into the real nature of the debate between Krugman and Okrent.

Then, there’s this paragraph from the Newsweek article:

Obama administration officials are dismissive of Krugman’s arguments, although not on the record. One official made the point that pundits can have a 60 percent chance of being right—and just go for it. They have nothing to lose but readers, and Krugman’s many fans have routinely forgiven his wrong calls. The government does not have the luxury of guessing wrong. If Obama miscalculates, he could truly crash the stock market and drive the economy into depression. Krugman’s suggestion that the government could take over the banking system is deeply impractical, Obama aides say. Krugman points to the example of Sweden, which nationalized its banks in the 1990s. But Sweden is tiny. The United States, with 8,000 banks, has a vastly more complex financial system. What’s more, the federal government does not have anywhere near the manpower or resources to take over the banking system.

Krugman swats away these arguments, though he acknowledges he’s not a “detail” man. He believes he is fighting a philosophical battle against the plutocrats and money-changers. Although he thinks Geithner has been captured by Wall Street, he has hope for Summers. “I have a strong suspicion that if Larry was on the outside and I was on the inside, we’d be reversing roles,” he says, but adds, “Well, not entirely. Larry has more faith in markets. I’m more of an interventionist.”

Thomas writes Krugman’s fans have “routinely forgiven his wrong calls.” What wrong calls? And what makes Thomas think Krugman has been “forgiven”? The truth is that most of Krugman’s fans are unaware that Krugman has ever been wrong about anything. It would certainly be a service to the readers of Newsweek if Thomas would explain the “wrong calls” Krugman has made — but Newsweek won’t go that far.

As for Krugman’s “swatting” away of the Obama administration’s arguments about the challenges of nationalizing the banks — is this the same as saying that Krugman fails to address these arguments? The word “swatting” typically refers to the killing of an insect — but Obama’s arguments aren’t insects, and Krugman’s “swatting” is only effective for those of us who have put Krugman in charge of our brains.

And what on earth does it mean that Krugman isn’t a “detail” man? Isn’t this the same as saying Krugman doesn’t really know what he’s talking about? George Bush wasn’t a “detail” man when it came to the reconstruction of Iraq, and the result was catastrophe. Isn’t it reasonable to argue that the details matter when you’re advocating the nationalization of the banks — an effort that seems comparable, at least in some ways, to the reconstruction of Iraq’s economy?

There’s this toward the end of the article:

Last week Krugman and Summers were “playing phone tag.” (“It doesn’t necessarily mean that much,” says Krugman. “We’ve known each other all our adult lives.” Summers initiated the call; Krugman suspects he wanted to talk him through the administration’s plan.) In Friday’s column, Krugman tweaked Summers directly for his faith in markets, though he grudgingly gave the Obamaites credit for calling for extensive regulation of the financial world. Krugman thinks that Obama needs some kind of “wise man” to advise him and mentions Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman who tamed inflation for Reagan and now heads an advisory panel for Obama.

Translation: Summers called Krugman, and Krugman hasn’t managed to get back to him yet. Krugman’s claim that “it doesn’t necessarily mean that much,” should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who thinks Krugman represents ordinary people in a battle with the powerful elite who run our nation’s economy. People who actually do represent the working class wouldn’t dismiss a call from Lawrence Summers — but Krugman belongs to the same elite that he criticizes, so his dismissiveness is just an indication of how unserious he really is in his efforts to make change.

Wired’s blog has posted a disturbing report today on a recent move made by the Obama administration in the area of intellectual property protections.

President Barack Obama came into office in January promising a new era of openness.

But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated across the globe.

The White House this week declared (.pdf) the text of the proposed treaty a “properly classified” national security secret, in rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request by Knowledge Ecology International.

“Please be advised the documents you seek are being withheld in full,” wrote Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The national security claim is stunning, given that the treaty negotiations have included the 27 member states of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand, all of whom presumably have access to the “classified” information.

In early January, the Bush administration made the same claim in rejecting (.pdf) a similar FOIA request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

If ratified, leaked documents posted on WikiLeaks and other comments suggest the proposed trade accord would criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, subject iPods to border searches and allow internet service providers to monitor their customers’ communications.

In his first days in office, Obama publicly committed himself to transparency, instructing government agencies to err on the side of public access and divulge information whenever possible under the Freedom of Information Act. Obama recently released a trove of documents relating to the Bush administration’s rationale for torture of enemy combatants and other abuses.

At the same time, though, Justice Department lawyers have been arguing in court that the “state secrets privilege” should bar lawsuits over the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.

I have always thought that we should partly measure Obama’s success during his time in office by the degree to which he facilitates the dismantling of executive power (the restoration of checks and balances), restores lawfulness to those warranted functions of the executive, and leaves us with a U.S. government apparatus better able to dampen the damage done by the next Bush-like administration (which is an inevitability, in my view).

I shouldn’t have to write this, but democratic countries should facilitate citizen knowledge and participation in major and minor decisions. Concealing controversial changes to intellectual property rights law behind a shield of classification seems to achieve the opposite of this ideal. Indeed, doing so seems ludicrous to me.

For your viewing pleasure, here goes a great visualization of the credit crisis by the LA-based graphic designer Jonathan Jarvis:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, supporters of Republican candidate John McCain harped incessently on the idea that the “surge” strategy in Iraq had “worked.” This strategy, which was ordered by President Bush and implemented by General David H. Petraus, acquired such a glowing reputation that journalists began asking Obama why he refused to “acknowledge” that the surge had been a success.

To refresh our memories, here’s a tidbit from September 2008 from McCain’s cheif surrogate:

“We know the surge has worked,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., at the Republican National Convention this evening. “Our men and women in uniform know it has worked.  I promise you — above all others — Al Qaeda knows it has worked.  The only people who deny it are Barack Obama and his buddies at MoveOn.org. Why won’t they admit it? Because Barack Obama’s campaign is built around us losing in Iraq.”

The challenge facing Democrats — to convince the American people, in spite of significant decreases in Iraqi violence and American casualties, that the surge wasn’t actually working — became so difficult that eventually Democrats basically abandoned the argument altogether.

Regular readers of this blog know I am highly reluctant to criticize President Obama, so you’ll appreciate my admission that I cringed when I viewed the following exchange between candidate Obama and Bill O’Reilly:

MR. O’REILLY: I think you were desperately wrong on the surge. And I think you should admit it to the nation that now we have defeated the terrorists in Iraq. And the al Qaeda came there after we invaded, as you know. Okay, we’ve defeated them. If we didn’t, they would have used it as a staging ground. We’ve also inhibited Iran from controlling the southern part of Iraq by the surge which you did not support. So why won’t you say, I was right in the beginning, I was wrong about that?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, if you’ve listened to what I’ve said, and I’ll repeat it right here on this show, I think that there’s no doubt that the violence in down. I believe that that is a testimony to the troops that were sent and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters. It has gone very well, partly because of the Anbar situation and the Sunni –

MR. O’REILLY: The awakening, right.

SEN. OBAMA: — awakening, partly because the Shi’a –

MR. O’REILLY: But if it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, look –

MR. O’REILLY: No, no, no, no.

SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

MR. O’REILLY: If it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no. Hold on.

MR. O’REILLY: You and Joe Biden — no surge.

SEN. OBAMA: No. Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous. And the president wanted to double-down and continue on open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure in the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile –

MR. O’REILLY: It worked. Come on.

SEN. OBAMA: Bill, what I’ve said is — I’ve already said it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

MR. O’REILLY: Right! So why can’t you just say, I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge?

SEN. OBAMA: Because there is an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We have reduced the violence –

MR. O’REILLY: Yeah?

SEN. OBAMA: — but the Iraqis still haven’t taken a responsibility. And we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, 10 (billion dollars) to $12 billion a month.

Obama essentially stopped all national debate on the effectiveness of the surge when he let it slip out that the surge worked “beyond our wildest dreams.” From then on, it became a matter of national consensus that the surge had been a success, and it seemed to follow that the war was almost won. The point of the harping by O’Reilly and Graham (and others, of course) was to discredit Obama’s plan to withdraw from Iraq, but ironically, their argument was self-defeating: If the surge is a success and the war is nearly over, then what’s wrong with withdrawing as Obama suggests?

When President Bush agreed to a ”time horizon“ for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, that sealed it. The news sent a clear message to the American people: You need not concern yourselves anymore with the war, it’s under control, the surge worked, Obama’s plan to withdraw will be ok, so you can direct your attention to other, more pressing matters.

The sense that we’ve won in Iraq was only intensified by the results of the recent election, as described by one of the war’s top cheerleaders, Charles Krauthammer:

WASHINGTON — Preoccupied as it was poring through Tom Daschle’s tax returns, Washington hardly noticed a near-miracle abroad. Iraq held provincial elections. There was no Election Day violence. Security was handled by Iraqi forces with little U.S. involvement. A fabulous bazaar of 14,400 candidates representing 400 parties participated, yielding results highly favorable to both Iraq and the United States.

Iraq moved away from religious sectarianism toward more secular nationalism. “All the parties that had the words ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab’ in their names lost,” noted Middle East expert Amir Taheri. “By contrast, all those that had the words ‘Iraq’ or ‘Iraqi’ gained.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went from leader of a small Islamic party to leader of the “State of the Law Party,” campaigning on security and secular nationalism. He won a smashing victory. His chief rival, a more sectarian and pro-Iranian Shiite religious party, was devastated. Another major Islamic party, the pro-Iranian Sadr faction, went from 11 percent of the vote to 3 percent, losing badly in its stronghold of Baghdad. The Islamic Fadhila party that had dominated Basra was almost wiped out.

The once-dominant Sunni party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the erstwhile insurgency was badly set back. New grass-roots tribal (“Awakening”) and secular Sunni leaders emerged.

Krauthammer sees the success of the elections as ultimately a validation of not only the surge, but the war itself. In the process, he made a clear reference to Thomas Ricks’ famous book about the war, “Fiasco.”

All this barely pierced the consciousness of official Washington. After all, it fundamentally contradicts the general establishment/media narrative of Iraq as “fiasco.”

One leading conservative thinker had concluded as early as 2004 that democracy in Iraq was “a childish fantasy.” Another sneered that the 2005 election that brought Maliki to power was “not an election but a census” — meaning people voted robotically according to their ethnicity and religious identity. The implication being that these primitives have no conception of democracy, and that trying to build one there is a fool’s errand.

What was lacking in all this condescension is what the critics so pride themselves in having — namely, context. What did they expect in the first elections after 30 years of totalitarian rule that destroyed civil society and systematically annihilated any independent or indigenous leadership? The only communal or social ties remaining after Saddam Hussein were those of ethnicity and sect.

But in the intervening years, while the critics washed their hands of Iraq, it began developing the sinews of civil society: a vibrant free press, a plethora of parties, the habits of negotiation and coalition-building. Reflecting these new realities, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani this time purposely and publicly backed no party, strongly signaling a return — contra Iran — to the Iraqi tradition of secular governance.

The big strategic winner here is the United States. The big loser is Iran. The parties Tehran backed are in retreat. The prime minister who staked his career on a strategic cooperation agreement with the United States emerged victorious. Moreover, this realignment from enemy state to emerging democratic ally, unlike Egypt’s flip from Soviet to U.S. ally in the 1970s, is not the work of a single autocrat (like Anwar Sadat), but a reflection of national opinion expressed in a democratic election.

It would be nice if Krauthammer were right. Nice for the country because we cannot afford to stay in Iraq, financially or politically. Nice for Republicans because they can point to our success in Iraq as the ultimate validation of President Bush. Nice for Democrats because they can keep their campaign promises to withdraw from Iraq without seeming to cause a humanitarian crisis when the country implodes into genocide upon our withdrawal.

Nice. Too nice to be true, if we listen to Ricks. Here is how Michiko Kakutani introduces Ricks in a review of Ricks’ latest book, “The Gamble” in the New York Times Book Review:

Thomas E. Ricks’s devastating 2006 book, “Fiasco,” provided a lucid, tough-minded assessment of the Iraq war, brilliantly summing up the political and military mistakes that had brought the United States, after more than three years of occupation, to a terrible tipping point there. Drawing upon the author’s reporting on the ground in Iraq and his many sources within the uniformed military, “Fiasco” chronicled how the United States “went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information,” and how flawed assumptions, drastic planning failures and plain old-fashioned hubris led to a “derelict occupation” that fueled a burgeoning insurgency.

Ricks isn’t a Bush stooge, in other words. I’ve read Ricks’ book, and I believe it is THE book to read if you want to understand the Iraq War, at least up through 2005. My respect for Ricks makes the rest of the review quite troubling:

Mr. Ricks writes as both an analyst and a reporter with lots of real-time access to the chain of command, and his book’s narrative is animated by closely observed descriptions of how the surge worked on the ground, by a savvy knowledge of internal Pentagon politics, and by a keen understanding of the Iraq war’s long-term fallout on already strained American forces.

While Mr. Ricks praises General Petraeus’s success in helping the military regain the strategic initiative in Iraq as an “extraordinary achievement” — reducing violence and reviving “American prospects in the war” — he also reminds us that the surge was meant to “create a breathing space that would then enable Iraqi politicians to find a way forward,” and that that outcome is still unclear. “The best grade” the surge campaign can be given, he says, “is a solid incomplete.”

This book went to press before the recent elections in Iraq, which largely took place peacefully and which appear to have strengthened the country’s more secular and centrist parties, and Mr. Ricks warns that the United States goal of achieving “sustainable security” there (a far cry from former President George W. Bush’s goal of a stable, democratic, pro-West Iraq) may still prove elusive — or at the very least require a long-term American presence. Although Mr. Ricks writes that he is saddened by the war’s “obvious costs to Iraqis and Americans” and by “the incompetence and profligacy with which the Bush administration conducted much of it,” he adds that he has come to the conclusion that “we can’t leave.”

As Mr. Ricks sees it, the regional and global repercussions of failure in Iraq would be far more dire than those incurred by the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam — ranging, in this case, from a full-blown civil war to “a spreading war in the Middle East,” from a stronger Iran presiding over a Finlandized Iraq to the rise of a brutal new Iraq led by “younger, tougher versions” of Saddam Hussein, who “by the time of the invasion was an aging, almost toothless tiger.”

In other words, Ricks doesn’t believe the surge has worked. Not at all. Ricks’ recent editorial in The Washington Post includes dire warnings:

Many worried that as the United States withdraws and its influence wanes, the Iraqi tendency toward violent solutions will increase. In September 2008, John McCreary, a veteran analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, predicted that the arrangement imposed by the U.S. government on Iraqi factions should worry us for several reasons. First, it produces what looks like peace — but isn’t. Second, one of the factions in such situations will invariably seek to break out of the arrangement. “Power sharing is always a prelude to violence,” usually after the force imposing it withdraws, he maintained.

Many of those closest to the situation in Iraq expect a full-blown civil war to break out there in the coming years. “I don’t think the Iraqi civil war has been fought yet,” one colonel told me. Others were concerned that Iraq was drifting toward a military takeover. Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen worried that the classic conditions for a military coup were developing — a venal political elite divorced from the population lives inside the Green Zone, while the Iraqi military outside the zone’s walls grows both more capable and closer to the people, working with them and trying to address their concerns.

In addition, the American embrace of former insurgents has created many new local power centers in Iraq, but many of the faces of those who run them remain obscure. “We’ve made a lot of deals with shady guys,” Col. Michael Galloucis, the Military Police commander in Baghdad, said in 2007, at the end of his tour. “It’s working. But the key is, is it sustainable?”

One of the least understood of those “shady guys” is also one of the most prominent — Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The U.S. government has consistently underestimated him, first in going into Iraq and then in 2004, when he violently confronted the American superpower. He not only survived those encounters but also emerged more powerful and was brought into the U.S.-created Iraqi government. If he can stay alive, more power is likely to flow to him.

For reasons of nationalism, if Sadr can be drawn into the political arena, he may effectively become an ally of convenience to the Americans. “It should not be forgotten that the Sadrists are Tehran’s historical main enemy among the Shiites of Iraq,” noted Reidar Visser, an Oxford-educated expert on Iraqi Shiites. But others contend that Sadr is just lying low until the United States draws down its troops and declares its combat role concluded.

The role of Iran remains problematic. At this point, that country appears to be the biggest winner in the Iraq war, and perhaps in the region. “Iran’s influence will remain and probably grow stronger,” said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist in Middle Eastern security affairs. “The Iranians have many contacts and agents of influence in Iraq, their border with Iraq is a strategic factor of permanent consequence and their role in the Iraqi economy is growing.”

What’s more, noted Toby Dodge, a British defense expert who was an occasional adviser to Petraeus, “the current Iraqi government is full of Iranian clients. You’ll almost certainly end up with a rough and ready dictatorship . . . that will be in hock to Iran.”

But many U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq believe that the biggest threat to American aspirations won’t be the Iranians but the Iraqis themselves. The Iraqi military is getting better, but it is still a deeply flawed institution, even with tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers keeping an eye on it.

Maj. Matt Whitney, who spent 2006 advising Iraqi generals, predicted that once U.S. forces were out of the way, Iraqi commanders would relapse to the brutal ways of earlier days: “Saddam Hussein taught them how to [suppress urban populations] and we’ve just reinforced that lesson for four years,” he said. “They’re ready to kill people — a lot of people — in order to get stability in Iraq.”

In my last interview with him, Odierno countered this thinking. He believes that Iraqi commanders have improved and that they will no longer automatically revert to Saddam-era viciousness. “I think two years ago that was true,” he said. “I think maybe even a year and a half ago it was true. I think a year ago it was a little less true. I think today it’s less true.” But, he added, problems clearly still remain, which is one reason the U.S. military presence will be required for some time.

But his hopeful assessment conflicts with the frequent statements of Iraqi commanders themselves. “When you got to know them and they’d be honest with you, every single one of them thought that the whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq was absolutely ludicrous,” said Maj. Chad Quayle, who advised an Iraqi battalion in south Baghdad during the surge.

So, to address the perceptive question that Petraeus posed during the invasion: How does this end?

Probably the best answer came from Charlie Miller, who did the first draft of policy development and presidential reporting for Petraeus. “I don’t think it does end,” he replied. “There will be some U.S. presence, and some relationship with the Iraqis, for decades. . . . We’re thinking in terms of Reconstruction after the Civil War.”

This is not so nice.

If Obama decides to keep his campaign promise to pull out of Iraq within 16 months — I wouldn’t care if he took two years, personally — he’ll have to prepare the American public for unpleasant consequences. A withdrawal may turn out well, leaving Iraq in relative peace and security. But if a withdrawal leads to a war that kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilizes the region in ways that have far-reaching consequences for American national security, Republicans will make the argument that Obama and the lefties who pressured him to withdraw were irresponsible. Republicans will argue that Obama knew the risks but decided to withdraw anyway because he valued his own political fortunes ahead of what was best for Iraq and for America.

Krauthammer is already laying the groundwork for this argument in his recent column:

This is not to say that these astonishing gains are irreversible. There loom three possible threats: (a) a coup from a rising and relatively clean military disgusted with the corruption of civilian politicians — the familiar post-colonial pattern of the past half-century; (b) a strongman emerging from a democratic system (Maliki?) and then subverting it, following the Russian and Venezuelan models; or (c) the collapse of the current system because of a premature U.S. withdrawal that leads to a collapse of security.

Averting the first two is the job of Iraqis. Averting the third is the job of the U.S. Which is why President Obama’s reaction to these remarkable elections, a perfunctory statement noting that they “should continue the process of Iraqis taking responsibility for their future,” was shockingly detached and ungenerous.

When you become president of the United States you inherit its history, even the parts you would have done differently. Obama might argue that American sacrifices in Iraq were not worth what we achieved. But for the purposes of current and future policy, that is entirely moot. Despite Obama’s opposition, America went on to create a small miracle in the heart of the Arab Middle East. President Obama is now the custodian of that miracle. It is his duty as leader of the nation that gave birth to this fledgling democracy to ensure that he does nothing to undermine it.

A post-withdrawal disaster in Iraq will be a bitter pill for Dems to swallow, especially if the economy has not significantly improved by the summer of 2010. If Iraq descends into chaos over the next two years and the economy remains stagnant, Democrats can kiss their majorities in Congress goodbye — along with any expectations that Obama will win reelection in 2012.

And that puts Republicans back in control of the economy, and back in control of Iraq.

The idea that Democrats should feel compelled to make concessions in order to gain Republican support isn’t very popular among Obama supporters. When they look at President Obama’s first big political battle — his successful push to get Congress to pass a $787 billion economic rescue bill — they bemoan the concessions Senate Democrats made in order to win three measley Republican votes.

Of course, without support from those three Republicans — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — Democrats wouldn’t have been able to prevent a Republican filabuster.

But the prevailing mood among lefties is: Bring it On! Bring on the filabuster! Let’s have Americans turn on the television every night and listen to Democrats blame Republicans for refusing to rescue our economy! Let’s show the American people just how obstructionist and unreasonable the Republicans really are!

Well, it looks like we may get our collective wish:

DENVER — President Obama has not ruled out a second stimulus package, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday, just before Mr. Obama signed his $787 billion recovery package into law with a statement that it would “set our economy on a firmer foundation.”

The president said he would not pretend “that today marks the end of our economic problems.”

“Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr. Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of layoffs.”

Mr. Gibbs, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Denver, said, “I think the president is going to do what’s necessary to grow this economy.” While “there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package,” he added, “I wouldn’t foreclose it.”

Here is my prediction: If Obama puts forth a second bill, none of the House and Senate Republicans who voted against the first stimulus package will even consider supporting a second passage. That leaves three Republicans — Collins, Snowe and Specter — who might come on board for a second bill, but I would put the chances of two of them immediately betraying their party a second time at close to zero. They would probably see a second bill as an opportunity to rejoin their party in hopes of avoiding a serious primary challenge when they run for reelection.

This means Democrats will probably be able to get a second stimulus bill passed in the House, but in the Senate, Democrats will be a vote or two shy of the 60 votes needed to stop Republicans from stopping the bill. Democrats (hopefully) won’t back down from advancing the bill — and Republicans won’t back down from opposing it — which means filabuster!

A filabuster is a special kind of political game — a tug of war where the rope is the American people. Every night, for as long as the filabuster lasts, Democrats and Republicans will go on television and try to pull the American people toward their position. Theoretically, a filabuster can end when one side wins the tug of war — that is, when the American people are so moved to one side of the argument that the other side caves for fear of losing votes in the next election. A filabuster can also end when both sides decide to negotiate a compromise that will allow them both to claim victory — but the media will usually declare a “winner,” even if a compromise is officially declared. It is a dangerous, high-stakes game.

Let’s say Democrats put forward a second bill. Republicans mount a filabuster. Then, Democrats campaign so successfully for their bill that Republicans end up caving under the pressure of public opinion. This would be a profound political victory for Democrats. It would clearly demonstrate the political strength of Democrats and the corresponding weakness for Republicans — and establish a political narrative that will make it much harder for Republicans to stand in the way of future Democratic efforts, such as efforts to transform our health care system. For years afterwards, Americans would remember how stubborn Republicans were in opposing a bill that most Americans ultimately supported.

On the other hand, what if Republicans end up winning the argument, and Democrats are forced to cave? This would be disasterous. It would set the stage for Republican opposition to just about everything Democrats try to achieve in Congress between now at the 2010 elections.

My advice to Democrats in Congress: If you do put together a second stimulus package, make sure every single iota of spending in the bill is 100% saleable to the American people. There should be no condoms in the bill, no resodding of the National Mall (great as that might be for the economy), no military benefits for Filipino veterans, etc. A second stimulus bill should contain only those projects that 90% of Congressional Democrats are prepared to defend until they are blue in the face on national television.

Because failure is not an option.